The Combine Journals
by combineoverlywatcher
Summary: The Combine has invaded Earth, and rebellions are beginning, not just in City 17, but all over the world. And all over the world, people are starting to realize that the Combine needs to be driven out, by all means necessary.
1. Graduation Day

Graduation Day

_Disclaimer: The information described in the story below is the copyright of the Valve Corporation. Although this is my original story, one of this background story regarding the passage has been generated by myself and shall not be thought of as such. The story below consists of merely the same background as the Half-Life series but from a different character viewpoint. This would simulate the exact same time period as the beginning of the video game Half-Life 2._

Date: June 14, 2019

Place: Austin, Texas, at the Combine-controlled Graduation Center

Name: Cheryl Tumper, Age 18

I knew that this was a death sentence right from the beginning. The whole place was loaded with Civil Protection units, or Metrocops, Combine police officers that enforced the laws of the Combine Overwatch. They wore light gray gas masks and dark blue armor, carrying with them electroshock beating sticks for people who didn't do exactly what the law specified. I hate them; the thought of those gut-wrenching monsters destroys my faith in humanity. They weren't just soldiers for the Combine, they were _humans_, sick, horrible humans that legitimately volunteered (yes, volunteered) to work for the greater good of the Combine Overwatch when they took over. They were pretty brutal, I've heard, and I did not disagree with the people that I'd heard it from, seeing as the Combine overall was pretty brutal to us. There had been harshly strict law enforcement ever since the end of the Seven Hour War.

It seems that I should explain the Seven Hour War, for those of you that haven't heard about it. I should actually go way back to the incident at Black Mesa. From what I've heard, Black Mesa was a giant laboratory for conducting chemical experiments. I had read in the paper, after they'd announced the end of the Seven Hour War, that the scientists at Black Mesa had made contact with some alien world, and a malfunction in one of the experiments that was conducted there resulted in the invasion of multiple alien species that had inhabited that alien world. They said that the Vortigaunts that we have here had actually been enslaved by those species and went on killing sprees around the facility. It's pretty hard to believe though, since the Vortigaunts here are so nice to us, and there's actually a reason for that. One of the scientist at Black Mesa, the one that had performed the actual experiment and caused what we call the Resonance Cascade (I think his name is something like Freeman), actually had to jump into the portal between Black Mesa and the alien world in order to close that portal and save the Earth. Well, he did do that, somehow, and in turn freed the Vortigaunts from their enslavement, and they were so grateful that they decided that they wanted to serve the human race.

But that wasn't all for the better. When the scientist closed the portal, he set off a chain reaction that caused widespread portal storms around the Earth. These portals were the same ones as in Black Mesa, so we were completely engulfed in alien life forms. That wasn't even the worst of our problems, though; the portal storms that occurred actually attracted a kind of inter-dimensional empire called the Combine, a force that raged through the universe and took control over everything that they could. All of the Earth's military force tried to resist when the Combine invaded, but it was not enough; the forces were defeated in the entirety of seven hours, hence the Seven Hour War. In order to end the war, though, a man called Wallace Breen sold humanity into slavery in return for their agreement to peace. And now, in a horrible turn of events, that monster has the say of the entire world.

I guess that would explain it for you. And now back to my death sentence.

The auditorium of the Graduation Center was filled with twelfth-grade students, with the Combine Metrocops lining the walls. One of the Combine's slaves stood on the auditorium stage, handing out diplomas to the graduates. And all was calm.

I know, all of this seems very light for something like the death sentences controlled by the Combine. But the Overwatch is not entirely strict; they allow us to finish school before we become slaves. So once any of us graduates, we become slaves for the Combine, and all of us are really too afraid to try and resist. If you get caught, you get killed, or even worse, you get taken in by the Combine and become a Stalker. And believe me, you do not want to know what that is. But even risking that, I don't want to become one of the Combine's pets. Which is why I plan to escape.

I've talked to many Vortigaunts in my day; they pretty much accommodate any human's needs. When I told them that I wanted to escape the graduation, they allowed me to speak no further and assured me that they would take care of the rest if I knew what I was risking. What I hadn't known, though, was that there had been a sort of Underground Railroad going on for a couple years now, helping Combine slaves escape, and it was simply powered by the Vortigaunts. They were happy to help me escape.

Rather than tell you what our fairly simple plan was, I'd be content to perform it for you myself. Here it goes.

As of now, there are about twenty or so students on the stage, being given diplomas and trying to swallow the fact that their life meant nothing from this moment on. I could see it in their eyes; they were attempting to be strong and push past the idea that they would be slaves for the rest of their lives, but they knew that it was the horrible, horrible reality. I felt bad for them, though, having such weak willpower. They never tried to fight back. I've never tried myself, but I knew that nobody else but me would be willing to pull a stunt like this now.

We've been arranged throughout the aisles of the audience in alphabetical order, A's in front and Z's in back. I kind of felt bad that Joseph Zimmerman and Kalie Yeller had to go with our group, the T's, instead of having a group of their own. We were last. The D's finished performing their own death sentences, and the ceremony moved on to the G's, where the two E's and one F had to be placed also because their groups were so miniscule.

I almost fell asleep during the rest of the graduation procession before my group, since it was oh so very boring and uninteresting. I think that it was odd, though, that the Metrocops had their slave perform a small speech for every group that went up, saying at least one original good trait about each group that, surprisingly, rang very true. All in all, though, it was the most boring thing that I had ever experienced in my life, besides literally watching what I had painted on a building wall dry so that I could leave the site.

Finally, after one full hour of standing around, our group, the T's, made our way onto the stage. It was helpful that I was small, because I could unnoticeably slip into the left backstage wing at exactly the same moment that I set foot on stage.

It didn't matter if the Metrocops saw me; I was free, free from the hands of the Combine. But I knew they would never go down without a fight. Quickly, I checked the backstage, and spotted the backside of a Metrocop behind the curtain at the front of which I had exited the stage, watching the procession and making sure that there were no disturbances. Quietly, I made my way to the back of the stage, making sure that I was not spotted. Careful in my movements, I noticed that there was another Metrocop standing precisely opposite the first one in the right wing. Unfortunately, he saw me, extracted his baton, and pointed at me, but by the time the other cop had turned around, I was gone into the hallway behind the left wing.

Making sure that I had no followers for the moment, I tore off my graduate's hat and robe, reverting back to my purple T-shirt and jeans. Suddenly, I realized a simple problem: I had no weapon to fight with. Searching the bare hallway for something hopeful, I found absolutely nothing.

Blinding pain shot through my brain like a dagger of ice. Cold and searing hot burns engulfed me, and I was sent crashing to the polished floor, spilling blood over the pearly tiles. A white haze blocked my vision, and I felt the shock of a stun baton wash over me and seize my body in a wave of stinging pain. There were sounds of struggles, and a hopeful energy burst let me know that my friends had arrived.

Slowly but surely, I became able to see again, noticing that the two Metrocops that had been pursuing me were dead on the same floor that I was lying on, small extra bits of electricity jolting out of their bodies. I tried to push myself off of the floor, but I faltered, still feeling the fading pain around my body. Suddenly, I felt a smooth jolt of energy, and the two-fingered hands of a Vortigaunt lifting me to safety.

It was amazing just how humanoid and just how alien these Vortigaunts were. They were a perfect combination of each, their elliptical head housing one massive eye with razor-sharp teeth in their mouth underneath their head and ogre-like ears on each side. They had very thin green bodies, with two normal double-fingered appendages on their sides and one small arm in the center of their torso. Their spindly legs lead down to two pyramid-shaped feet.

"Let us bring you to safety," it said, the Vortigese accent almost palpable. "There will be more. I advise you to take one of these weapons from the Civil Protection."

Obeying the wise alien, I kneeled and gingerly grabbed one of the stun batons, standing and holding it firmly in my left hand. I whipped it through the air to test it, and sure enough, it lit up in a flame of blue electricity. I found a small button on the base of the handle, pressed it, and it obediently doused the flame, returning to a normal baton.

"You are ready?" asked the Vortigaunt. I nodded, and he took off through the hallway, leaving me no choice but to follow in his wake.


	2. Cityscape

Cityscape

_Disclaimer: The information described in the story below is the copyright of the Valve Corporation. Although this my original story, one of this background story regarding the passage has been generated by myself and shall not be thought of as such. The story below consists of merely the same background as the Half-Life series but from a different character viewpoint. This would simulate the exact same time period as the beginning of the video game Half-Life 2._

Date: June 14, 2019

Place: Penza, Russia, in a small apartment building surrounded by Combine Overwatch soldiers

Name: Aladein Vialor, Age 31

The Combine Overwatch commands blared in the sky as I once again reminded myself that I was hardly in any danger. The Overwatch soldiers wouldn't hurt me unless I was doing something harmful to them, and that's usually the case. Yet sometimes these ruthless soldiers go on random raids and kill every single slave in sight. We don't matter much to them; we're their work force, and that's about it.

"All Overwatch soldiers to Blue Grass Apartments," said the voice up ahead. I realized that it didn't take long for the Combine to recognize the things that occurred on Earth here. They were always watching, always monitoring us, those sick beasts, going in and killing everything if they heard even a pin drop.

A pin did indeed drop this time, although I figured it'd have to be a pretty large pin for the Combine to recognize it as a civil disturbance. We have a lot of those around here; sometimes the slaves try to escape their designated room, or maybe they wanted to off themselves instead of serve the Combine. But somehow this seemed like a bigger deal to them. I had looked outside my window at the top floor and noticed about fifty armored soldiers out there, pointing their guns at the entrance to the building. Maybe somebody had killed themselves. That's a path I'd rather not take; I've fought the Combine before, and I know their ruthless demeanor by heart. It's not much of a surprise to me that they used their power to control absolutely everything that happened to us.

Feeling tired, I lay back against the wall, my figure slumped because the room was so bare and I was a bit weak from the lack of food that the Combine had to supply for us daily. Yet this day seemed to have been forgotten. The Combine appeared too occupied with their "civil disturbance" to make sure that their work force survived. Giving up on thinking for the moment, I slowly fell into a dozy snooze.

Suddenly, there was a gun in my hand. I barreled through a couple of Overwatch soldiers, and took cover from the gunship that was shooting at me. Someone handed me a rocket launcher and I successfully took down the gunship with three easy blows. The MP7 was back in my hands, and some white-armored Elite Overwatch Soldiers emerged from the dropship that had landed, firing their pulse-rifles at everything that moved. I heard the sound of a drawn-out energy pulse, and the garbage dump that I was crouched behind shook back, ripping up the foundation underneath it.

I knew this place. It was Kiev, my hometown, where my parents had first raised me and then watched as I marched off to war at age twenty-five. That was six years ago, but I still remember the war in Libya quite vividly. Its government had been horribly unstable after the death of Muammar Gaddafi, and after the occurrence we had all left the country to sit and rot in the aftermath of its several rebellions and uprisings against the terrible reign of that dictator. The people had been so out of control by then that they started causing even more havoc than they had before, turning over buildings and crushing the very land that they sat on. As a response to this mess, the United Nations had decided to move their troops into Libya and try to settle things down, but this only began World War III. This was just three years before Senator Wallace Breen became the American President and caused the apocalypse.

In the very middle of this war was when the Combine had invaded us. When the portal storms began, thousands of hostile alien menaces began filling the battlegrounds, and soon we had to all move out of Libya and seal it in, creating a zombie country. Literally a zombie country, I mean; from the portal storms had emerged hundreds of zombie-like creatures, people with bugs for heads. I've only seen pictures of them, though. Gladly I've had no actual encounters.

From these aliens and their portals had followed thousands upon thousands of humanoid creatures, armed with strange guns that fired tiny energetic pulses instead of bullets, with the ability to launch a golf ball-sized orb of energy that destroyed everything in its wake. These people, called the Combine, had invaded Earth; the entire Earth, such that all of us were called to a new battle and every human above the age of eighteen was drafted to fight what we called the Seven Hour War. I had been transported to Kiev; we all had been transported to our hometowns, in order to give us a sense of security and so that we would be able to fight on a ground that we knew best.

It had not been long before the Combine reached our city and called in about four thousand of these warriors to us. They had brought with them hundreds of tan and white Overwatch gunships, giant flying airships that looked strangely organic, with one huge rod on the front end where the mobile wings had been placed and a gigantic circle on the back that held its massive propeller. The bullets that it could fire were insanely destructive, not unlike the black, somewhat normal-looking Overwatch helicopters that patrolled our city in the years to come. And even more enormous than these comparatively smaller vehicles were Combine dropships, another kind of Combine ship that looked like a light tan, colossal, flattened-out, armored human, but without a head and with a huge suction appendage in the center of its body. I've seen this ship drop many things; containers of soldiers, Striders, Hunters, and sometimes even Advisors, but I'll get to those things later.

This overwhelming war had lasted just seven hours, but it was about four years after I had fought the war in Libya, so Breen had already been elected president after running the experimental facility called Black Mesa, where this entire mess had begun in the first place. As our force had started to diminish, there was an Overwatch command from high above in the sky, but through the explosions and gunfire I had not been able to recognize the words. Somewhere in the midst, I had been hit in the arm by gunship flak, and a fellow soldier had given me a medkit to patch myself up. In the haze, I had slowly noticed that the Overwatch soldiers began to retreat, and stood, amazed at our soldiers' resilience. At first, we had felt that we had reason to celebrate, and cheered at our victory. We had returned to our homes, satisfied by our work on the battlefield. Once I had gotten home, I turned on the television and sat on my couch to watch the news. Of course, this had been several days after the war was ended, so I was more relaxed than I had been for the past week. As I had turned on the news, I saw President Breen's face, and had wondered why he would be in the news. I had continued to watch the story about Breen giving away the Earth's people in order to end the war, and felt nothing but complete resentment for him and for humanity, horrified at Breen's willingness to let the Combine take over the Earth entirely. It had been said that he officially signed the document that had handed away the rights to all humans under the control of the Combine in the United Nations building over in America. After he did this, the reporters had said that Breen had become the administrator of the entire Earth, under the control of the Combine Overwatch.

That day had marked the beginning of my life in Penza. After about one week, the Overwatch soldiers had returned and took all of us into custody, deporting us each to different cities. I had been taken to Penza, while others had been transported to other places like Leningrad and Alapayevsk. I was declared a slave for the Combine, and all of my rights had been revoked. And here we are.

The sound of gunfire shook me awake. I knew that I should not have fallen asleep with the Combine filling the building! What was I thinking? I knew that they would arrive up here soon, so I jolted up and became alert. There were more repetitive shots, and I noticed that the Overwatch soldiers had taken up our use of the MP7. But who would they be shooting with it?

After a third round of bullets, and I realized that they were some three floors below me. I was safe, for now at least.

More gunfire. The shots seemed a bit closer now, as if they had moved up a floor. I heard the sound of a pulse-rifle, and my face became drained of blood; I knew that something was wrong whenever I heard that noise. There were more MP7s being fired, accompanying the sound of the pulses, and I immediately knew that the other slaves were trying to fight back. It was no use to rebel directly; any person that did that and didn't know completely what they were doing would be vaporized by the Combine's energy orbs.

Knowing that the soldiers were approaching fast and that they would kick in my door at any moment, I quickly raced around my room to grab any small necessities that I would need during my journey out of the building. I wanted to avoid the Combine at all costs, and if that meant risking my life escaping this dump, I was never too eager to do so. I wanted to show them that they didn't control me, and even more so, I wanted to show myself. I wasn't just another one of the Combine's work force, I was a human, a human that had been denied his rights and would fight to the death for his freedom. A human that would spark the rebellion of Russia.

I snagged up a couple of med kits that I had preserved from my days in the Seven Hour War, and stuffed them into a water-proof backpack that I had used during my years as a Boy Scout. In a crate, I had stashed some apples, oranges, and bananas that, through the years, the Combine had supplied us with each day for sustenance. I had eaten everything except for the fruits, which were indeed only apples, oranges, and bananas, and stored them in this crate, knowing that I would need them sometime in the future if I was ever in dire need of food. I'm not entirely sure that this was one of those moments, but I decided that anything could occur during my trek to safety; I might be stranded in the cold with nothing to eat, and then where would I be?

Moving on from placing two of each fruit into the pack, I was heading over to the other side of my room when I noticed the sharp noise of the Overwatch soldiers' boots clattering up the stairs. Great. Now they were only one floor below me. Leaving the drawer of the desk that I was standing in front of, I bolted out of my door and into the hallway, pulling the backpack along behind me. The hall way was very narrow, holding about six rooms, three on each side. On the opposite end of the hallway, I had been shown several times that there was a pull-down staircase that led to the roof. Hearing more distinct gunfire, I raced toward the door at the end of the hall and shook the handle. Apparently it had been locked. I was not in the least bit surprised; they Combine had always trapped their slaves in the building, and I hadn't minded. But rarely had the soldiers ever gotten this close to my apartment.

I tried to kick down the door; that didn't work at all for me. I tried banging on it, but I knew that that was hopeless. After about five minutes of this, one of my fellow slaves peeked out of their apartment door, his voice muffled by the horrifyingly close gunfire.

"What the hell's going on here?" he asked me, frowning. "You trying to escape or something?"

I grinned at him and nodded my head.

"Well, it's not working for you then, is it?" he mused. "If it was, you'd be outta here already. Gone. Never coming back."

This time it was my turn to frown at him. He was making perfect sense, but it was awfully difficult for me to decode his intentions.

"You might wanna use something substantial if you're gonna break through that door. Here, let me get something for you. I'll be quick, trust me. I can hear those guns as clear as you." He held up a finger and disappeared into his apartment. In a few seconds' time, he returned with a full-sized crowbar. I became surprised and raised an eyebrow at his willingness to give this sleek weapon away so easily.

"I know, I know, it's nice. But I don't have any use for it anymore. You heard those gunshots. They're not investigating. They're _killing_. One of their random killing sprees through the building. Both of us know that I won't survive this. So please, take it. It's my token of gratitude for a rebel that would have the guts to even walk out of his own apartment. From William Richards." He handed the weapon over to me, and I looked at it, astonished, completely speechless at his kindness. I began to speak, but he held up a hand to me as an order to keep quiet. "I don't think you have any more time for thank-you's. You need to get going."

I nodded in consent and bolted back toward the door, using the crowbar to hack through its surprisingly fragile wooden frame. And just as I stepped in and pulled down the staircase, the door to the stairwell opposite Will's own doorway beeped quickly four times, the light on its advanced machine-lock blinking with the sounds. I hopped onto the staircase and ran up its up its thin wooden steps precisely at the same moment that the door exploded and several dark-armored Overwatch soldiers poured into the area through the smoke that engulfed the entire corridor.

I stepped onto the hard concrete roof and closed the trapdoor immediately as I had heard sounds of gunfire. I took a deep breath and stood from my crouch. I was safe.

Or so I had thought. Although there were no Combine soldiers up here with me, I quickly noticed the deadly hum of a Combine gunship propeller. I turned my back, and found myself staring in the face of the enormous Combine vehicle that seemed to be patrolling the building. Obviously something was going seriously wrong.

Although it took a few seconds to recognize me as a slave, the gunship did not hesitate to hack me to bits. As the guns began firing, I held the crowbar in front of me, which effectively deflected the bullets in most areas of my body. After taking a couple hits, I realized that I couldn't stand up here all day. Noticing a ladder on the back wall of the building, which to my luck had been placed directly behind my back, I attempted hop backwards in a kind of run, and before I knew it managed to find myself against that back wall. Deflecting more flak, I jumped backward down toward the ladder's rungs, and didn't make it far down before I caught myself on the ladder and hoisted myself upward in a comfortable position that I could work with.

Unfortunately, not all was as great as I hoped that it would be. Even though I was safe from the gunship, the wall that I was climbing down on was not the back wall; it was the front, which left me open to all of the Combine's forces that had been left outside the building. Not entirely thinking about whether they had noticed me or not, I peered down the front end of the building. It did not take me long to realize my plan: I could effectively escape both the Combine's and the gunship's fire if I climbed down to the floor below my apartment, the fourth floor, and made my way down the staircases where there would be no soldiers to stop me, since they were all stationed at the entrance of the building and the top floor. As to what I would do once I got outside again…that was a question for the future version of myself.

Hearing guns from down below my body, I slid down the ladder with my hands on its sides, making sure that I stopped once I got to the second window from the top. Luckily for me, there were two windows on each side of the ladder, so I got to choose where I entered when I reached them. Stopping myself before I slid any further, I promptly smashed the window on the right with my crowbar and leaped into the room that accompanied it, finding a slave dead on the floor, a fresh pool of blood still leaking onto the wooden carpet. I hardly reacted to it; I had seen this almost daily back in Libya.

Finding nothing useful in the almost bare room, I headed out of the apartment and into the hallway, being cautious for any remaining soldiers. There were sounds of repetitive gunfire from above me, and remembered that I definitely should search the apartments for useful weapons. Making no use of the apartments that I searched, I headed further down the hallway until I found an open door at the end of the hall, in it a bloody corpse and in the dead slave's hand…a gun. A real pistol. This slave must have been the one that had rebelled. The weapon was the same that our Metrocops carried around us, beside their electric stun batons. It was a light gray pistol, the exact same color as the Metrocops' gas masks, tipped at the ends with a darker gray color. I pried the small gun out of the slave's hands, stuck the crowbar through my belt, and made my way through the remains of the door to the stairwell to the stairs.

As I was heading down the stairs, I felt like I heard muffled voices. I stopped, and the voices were nowhere to be found. So I continued on my journey down to the third floor, pausing once again at the base of the stairs in order to confirm that the voices were truly nonexistent. As I pressed my left ear to the door, however, the voices reappeared again. They were not normal voices, though; they seemed more like technological speech, sounds that would be emitted from some communication mechanism, or…a gas mask.

A gas mask. I knew it right away. The Overwatch soldiers were directly through that door, on my tail, waiting for me to emerge so that they could kill me here and now. They had come up here from below so that they could corner me on this floor, and I was trapped, trapped between the voices in the other room and the soldiers high up above me. There was no hope for me except to barge straight through the door and hack through the soldiers one by one.

Seeing no other option, I, screaming obscenely, destroyed the door in front of me with one swift blow of the crowbar, quickly re-stationing it at my side. In the rubble, I found myself staring into the dark blue gas mask of a Combine Overwatch soldier. Blood spilled onto my face as I sent three well-placed bullets in the spaces between his equally blue armor, killing him instantly. I knew the anatomy of this armor well; I had faced it too many times in the hours that I had fought them back home. The soldier emitted a static grunt, and he was sent toppling to the floor as I struck another soldier directly above his brain before he had even one chance to shoot me. Holding another soldier back with the curved edge of my crowbar, I blasted the soldier in front of me on his mask just as he began to shoot me with his own MP7 sub-machine gun. I drove the edge of my crowbar into the neck of the soldier that I had been holding back while shooting my bullets into yet another soldier's armor. The blood from this soldier's neck erupted like a fountain as he crumpled to the ground below me.

Yet another soldier appeared in the hallway at my front, and I pulled the trigger of my pistol again, but the only sound that I heard was a sharp clicking noise that meant that my magazine was completely empty. Moving quickly back into the room, under the stairs for cover, and sticking the useless gun into my belt, I noticed a dead soldier beside me and took the MP7 from his motionless body. Checking its ammunition levels, I figured that I had quite a bit of gunfire to spare, and ripped apart the lingering Overwatch soldier as soon as he entered the room. I looted his ammunition for my own, finding a couple magazines for my pistol as well as my MP7, then I filed the magazines into an easily accessible pocket in my backpack, and dashed down the now-empty hallway.

There were no other Combine soldiers that had come my way after this; I guess they assumed that I was dead by now. Obviously none of them had any idea who they were dealing with. I was a survivor of Libya, and even more so, I was a survivor of the Seven Hour War. That was something only a few people had survived. All of the other slaves in the building had come from cities that weren't even involved in the war. They were lucky; they didn't have to see their friends and comrades die in front of their face; they didn't have to be overwhelmed by the hopelessness of their survival; they didn't have to stare destruction straight in the face.

Moving on, I headed down the staircase toward the second floor. Fortunately, I heard no voices, so I figured that all was going to be safe on my trip down the building. Opening the unharmed door and silently sliding into the hallway, I quickly realized that the coast was clear. I would be entirely safe until I reached the entry doors.

Yet I was only a tiny bit skeptical at my ideas; this hallway was not perfectly straight and narrow like the others that lead the floors above me. At the end of this comparatively wider hallway, there was a sharp turn in the path, so I, not expecting anything too deadly, carefully navigated the bend.

Once I had spotted that telltale blue armor, I instantly retracted into the bare section of the hallway and back into safety. Without delay, I mused over my options: I could charge straight in like I had the last time and barrel through the soldiers without ceasing my fire, but I couldn't know exactly how many soldiers were filling the fatal path, and the length of time that it would take me to use up my ammunition could be simply estimated at best. At another angle, from the other soldiers' MP7s, I had taken with me a couple of small grenades that could be launched from one of the compartments on the gun. I could take some soldiers down with those, but I'm not sure that they could turn any corners and harm any significant fraction of the squad. And so far, these were the only options that I had to work with, using what weapons I had, at least.

Remaining completely motionless, I scanned my area of the corridor for anything useful. There were no weapons in clear sight, but something interesting caught my eye. In the room to my right, it appears that the door had been kicked open with more force than usual, and there was yet another dead slave lying on the floor, dozens of bullet holes piercing his blood-soaked skull. And the interesting component was that his right arm appeared to be reaching for something that was hidden underneath the shade of his featureless bed. If this object was the last thing that had ever been reaching for, than he must have thought that it could have potentially saved his life, so who's to say that it won't save mine?

Making sure to keep my steps as light as feathers, I slowly made my way inside the room, carefully handling the door as it shut behind me. Once I was completely safe, I noiselessly stuck my arm down under the slave's bed where his arm had been reaching. I bent the arm so as to pull it back, and in the light I realized that in his tightly wrapped fingers was a pin. Not a hairpin and certainly not a clothespin. It was tiny, a miniscule strand of metal that ended in a perfect aluminum circle that was coiled around his index finger. Suddenly I began to hear rapid, muffled beeps. This was no ordinary pin. This was a _grenade_ pin.

All I could do before the grenade destroyed everything in the room and sent what it hadn't destroyed flying was strike out the door and get most of myself out of the place. Luckily, I had escaped the heart of the blow, but, along with the debris, I was thrown down the hallway, and my head crashed into the door to the stairwell that lead to the third floor.

For the moment, I guess I was in some sort of paralysis state, because every time I tried to move, I began to feel sick and immediately the muscle tension was ceased. My vision was horribly blurred, and I had no idea whether it was the smoke or the shock of the explosion that did that. But slowly, I did regain my sight. And what I saw was that, through the smoke and rubble, dozens of Combine soldiers were emerging, unharmed by the explosion, ready to kill me.

Now a bit recovered from the blow, I hastily fumbled at my belt for my pistol. Sliding out the barrel, I took down a couple of soldiers by sticking bullets in their brains, finishing some of the others off with the grenade from my sub-machine gun. No question, this explosion was far more efficient and a lot less powerful than the other grenade, but it did activated some debris, and the thing that was odd was that, after the first explosion, I had not noticed the few other grenades that had slowly been rolling out of the room with the rubble. Of course, I did notice them now, as the subtle explosion took its course and sent one of these grenades flying straight into my lap.

Applying absolutely zero thought to this, I shoved the grenade into my pack and stood, shooting down a couple more soldiers with my MP7. From my peripheral vision I noticed two more grenades of the same measure, and, frightened, saw that one of them was in flames, probably from the blast of my MP7 grenade. Having no time to lose before I get blown to bits, I hurriedly snatched up the grenade that was not lit with deadly fire and dashed through some more Combine soldiers and down the rest of the hallway toward the door that would lead down to floor one.

Spinning around toward my back side, I drove several bullets through some remaining soldiers that I had passed just as they had turned to kill me. I heard the grenade blow the rest of the debris and rubble into oblivion, and the floor beneath my feet shook terribly, causing me to stumble and lean against the wall in an attempt to steady myself. Turning back around again, I made my way further down the hallway, opened the door to the stairwell and headed down the steps, knowing that even if voices were not present, it did not mean that my enemies were not. This is my last chance to leave this building alive, and based on my experiences on the previous floors, I knew that the odds of that happening were greatly in my favor.

Moving ever so silently, I pushed down the handle and swung the door open, expecting to see more Combine soldiers. But the hallway was bare. No living thing stood on its premises, or at least not on the part of it that I could see. There was the long, empty hallway before me, twisting to the right at the end, and exceeding that was the entrance room, a small windowed area that held the two double doors that would lead outside. At the end of the hall, before the turn, I saw a tiny room that was void of any door, but held what looked like useful supplies.

Heading straight down toward the end of the hallway, I entered the dark room and flicked on the light switch, exposing a small wooden crate that lay before me on the ground. Curious, I smashed it open with my crowbar, and surprisingly, it held very useful supplies: two med kits in perfect condition, made complete with a health vial and gauze wrap for more serious injuries. Although there were a few in my pack, I used these to patch up my minimal gunshot wounds and to make sure I was as healthy as possible before I faced the mother squad of Overwatch soldiers. After using up the med kits, I stood, but not before feeling the ground shake once again, this time with more force, as if there had been an entire earthquake packaged into one simple second.

Rotating myself around to face the entryway to the room, I heard a strange noise, one that would come from a young mammal suckling on its mother's teat. It kept repeating itself, not ceasing, so I stuck my head through the space between the room and the hallway, and noticed the oddest of all animals in front of me. It was something that I had never seen before in my life: a crab-like animal that consisted of a thick little round body, with two small stubby legs at its front and two comparatively larger legs in the back facing me. The color of its skin was very tan, but more toward the base of its structure there were many extremely dark red spots, and I couldn't help thinking of dried blood. Apparently sensing my presence, the creature spun itself around, and I noticed that there were numerous fangs of the same tan color lining the front of its body.

Trying to appear friendly, I lightly waved my hand up beside my head, meandering out of the room. The creature slowly moved its stubby legs toward me, and I jumped, terrified, as it swiftly leapt up to the exact height of my head, showing off an enormous dark hole on the center of its body that I assumed to be its mouth. But this was not any kind of good observation, as the creature flew toward me, using its huge maw to completely envelop my face. And right as the horrid thing grabbed me I began screaming my throat dry, and felt its gooey saliva touch my head as it vacuumed my entire face into its fangs. Making sure that the beast would come to doing no true harm, I, in an awful panic state, fumbled for the crowbar in my belt and beat the monster until I felt the horrific suckling and digesting stop, and knew that I had killed it. Falling to the floor, I wrenched the terrible beast off of my head and began to pant heavily, feeling the shock of the near-death experience creep up on me the same way as the strange animal had.

Standing up, I began to prepare myself for more military combat, extracting more health vials and becoming completely healed. I took some of the gauze wrap and wiped the think mucus from the top of my head, almost gagging at the texture of the substance. It was unusually thick but ran as smoothly as maple syrup, making it a disgusting fluid to even touch in this kind of way. Putting away the med kits and making sure that I was completely prepared for what I knew I had to face, I, taking a short look back at the vacant hall, headed toward the doors and opened them to the sunlight.


End file.
